Blood in the Water (29 page)

She looked critically at his blackened eye. “Poor boy.”

Closing his eyes as she bathed the bruise, Tathrin felt the cloth catch on his bristles. “I haven’t shaved—”

“Hush.” She pressed a finger to his lips. “Would you like some white brandy to take the sting out of that? Or something sweeter?” She kissed him. “Yes, that’s better, isn’t it?” She took his hand and cupped it around her breast, kissing him again.

So soft, so warm, so fragrant. Tathrin couldn’t help his rising ardour and knew the girl must be feeling it too. Would it be so wrong? Tathrin couldn’t decide. His tired mind in turmoil, he found himself responding to her kiss.

“That’s better.” The girl deftly unbuckled his belt and tugged his shirt free. “Not so shy now.”

Unresisting, he let her lead him to the daybed. As he lay back, he thought she was going to unlace his boots. She unlaced his breeches instead. Tathrin wound his bruised hands in the girl’s soft hair and closed his eyes. Why not take a little pleasure for himself? It wouldn’t mean anything, after all.

He was so weary, so confused, still a little afraid, still more than a little angry with Sorgrad, with Gren, with Aremil and Failla for keeping such secrets from him. If he could lose himself in physical sensation, maybe that would stop him worrying about her.

Chapter Twenty

Failla

Carluse Town,

14th of Aft-Autumn

“Bring us our priest!” Milar’s shout was a plea.

Reher’s bellow was a full-throated accusation. “How dare you detain Master Ernout?”

Failla had left them in the cobbled marketplace overlooked by the castle’s gatehouse. She was walking swiftly along the wide rocky ditch that separated the town’s most prized houses from the castle precincts. In the pre-dawn light, everything was grey: the garden walls down the slope to her left, the path worn in the turf ahead, the forbidding battlements across the gaping chasm to her right.

“Bring us our priest!”

That roar must have rattled the windows. She heard lesser voices. Reher’s shouts were rousing outraged householders. Milar had already knocked on plenty of doors as they marched up the long main street.

“If Ernout committed some crime, let him answer at the shrine of Raeponin!” he demanded.

Failla had kept her head down and her hood up for fear of being recognised, so she had no idea how many townsfolk were braving Duchess Tadira’s anger for Ernout’s sake. Fewer than his kindness and generosity merited, she wagered. But saving those who deserved it meant saving cowards and ingrates too.

She hurried on, clutching the hood under her chin. Faint amusement lightened her apprehension. Plenty of folk would recognise Reher, and they’d want to know where he’d been and how he’d evaded the besieging army to get back into the town. The castle guards wouldn’t be able to tell nosiness from insurrection as the crowd swelled. So they’d send for reinforcements and men at more tedious posts would hurry to see what was afoot.

The ditch curved and Failla saw the castle’s lesser gate. To her relief, its narrow wooden bridge was intact. Either Duchess Tadira refused to countenance preparation for a last stand or the garrison commander knew a few men with axes could bring it down before any assault reached this far.

Other voices drowned out whatever Milar and Reher were shouting now, though if they were raised in agreement or protest, Failla couldn’t tell.

She looked covertly at the slit windows on either side of the lesser gate. Sentries would be watching her. But they’d just see an unknown woman hoping something remained of the castle’s leavings, which were set out every evening for the hungry poor. Only Failla saw no sign of the usual baskets. There were no scraps on the dusty ground, no footprints.

Had Duchess Tadira abandoned that customary charity? Failla cursed under her breath. She should have asked Milar. But she’d have had to explain her plan. Both men would have instantly forbidden it. If she’d stopped to reflect, she might even have changed her own mind.

“Open up and answer for your misdeeds!”

How long could Reher keep up such bellowing? How long before some sentry here wondered what this black-cloaked woman was doing, if there was no food to be scavenged?

She hurried across the narrow bridge, drew a deep breath and knocked. Saedrin send she knew at least one of the sergeants on guard. One of those who didn’t enjoy Duke Garnot’s favour. If not, well, whoever was on the night watch would be sluggish and heavy-eyed, ready for his bed. Failla was ready to promise to join him, if that’s what it took to get into the castle.

But her knock prompted no answer. She tried again, frowning. The peephole remained blind, the door locked. Had the commotion drawn all the sentries to the main gate? Scores of voices were now demanding their priest.

Well, this wasn’t the only way in. She had come too far to give up now. If she did, all she’d have achieved was getting Milar and Reher clapped in chains.

Failla unclasped the sable cloak and let it fall to the broken bottom of the ditch, twice a tall man’s height below. Regardless of the chill, she couldn’t risk the fur’s weight dragging at her shoulders. Pressing her face to the castle wall, she began edging along the sloping turf, towards the empty sky where the rocky ditch met the cliff.

The wall continued around, above the shattering drop. It was only at the very pinnacle of the crag, on the far side of the inner keep, that gardens had been laid out between the defences and the unguarded drop. Failla wasn’t attempting to go that far. Sentries manned the garden’s gates and even the Mountain Men had shaken their heads at the thought of scaling such lethal heights. She just had to round this first corner and make her way to the sluice chute. Step by tiny step, she continued.

The sun was rising on the far side of the castle. As soon as she rounded that first corner, she’d be hidden in the dense shadow falling across the broad vale below. Bigger and heavier men had done this and more than once. She’d never heard of one falling to his death.

Her creeping fingers found the angle of the wall. Despite herself, she gazed out across the dizzying emptiness. Distant hills were shadowed with trees. The insistent breeze tugged at her skirts. No. She wasn’t going to look down. Failla pressed her face against the unyielding stone and edged along the narrow ledge between the wall and the calamitous drop.

The sluice chute wasn’t far and her nose told her when it was close. Failla took as deep a breath as she could without gagging and halted. She wasn’t going to fall to her death on some slick of night soil. Maidservants would already be emptying the chamber pots.

Sure enough, she heard the sluice room door open. Pots rattled and noisome contents slopped through the chute. A bucket clanked and water rushed out to wash the ordure down the cliff.

How soon before she heard a voice she could trust? There were few enough of those. She shivered, her hands going ominously numb.

Halcarion be thanked, excited voices followed the next rush of waste.

“He was Findrin’s journeyman!”

“What’s happened to the priest?”

Not the woman Failla would have chosen but trustworthy enough.

“Zarene!”

The clink of earthenware stilled.

“What’s that?”

Failla breathed more easily. The startled girl must be new to the castle, so she wouldn’t recognise Failla.

“Zarene, it’s me, Failla!”

“But you’re—” Zarene choked.

“Where—?”

Failla spoke swiftly to stop the new girl’s questions. “It was the only way I could get safely away.”

“Saedrin save us.” Zarene’s curiosity overcame her bewilderment. “What are you doing out there?”

Failla chose her words carefully. Zarene was too timid to trust with the truth.

“What you don’t know can’t get you whipped. Just open the upper window and throw out the rope.”

“What window? What rope?” the new girl demanded.

“I don’t know—” Zarene wavered.

“Drianon’s my witness, I’m here to help. All of you and your families. When did you last see your mother, Zarene?” Failla guessed the duchess was keeping the castle servants confined, so they didn’t learn how harshly she was treating the town.

“They won’t let us—” Zarene whimpered.

“Who is that?” the new girl persisted.

“You stick to your own stitches!” Zarene spat with all the fury of a victim unable to confront her true tormenters.

“I’m a friend, truly,” Failla promised, suddenly terrified the girl would retaliate by betraying them both.

“I’ll open the window,” Zarene said abruptly. “But no more.”

Failla heard rapid feet and the door slam. The new girl’s life must be free from love and lust, if no one had told her about the knotted rope hidden behind the shutters above the sluice.

Dalliance between the castle’s maids and the garrison was strongly discouraged. Any unwed woman found pregnant was ordered to name the father and he was obliged to marry her. Refusal meant dismissal and loss of all ducal favour. Few men seeking riches through fealty to Carluse colours risked that.

Few maidservants wanted to be shackled to a swordsman at Duke Garnot’s disposal. The town had enough widows. They favoured courtships with honest craftsmen. Long since, some ardent swain and his bold girl had decided market-day meetings weren’t enough. He’d risked the cliff ledge so they could exchange loving words through the smelly chute.

Was she the first to secure a rope to the storage room window? Failla didn’t care. Halcarion just send that none of the sentries privy to the secret had cut it down. Hopefully being able to slip out unseen to the town still outweighed the risk to the castle’s defences. After all, who but the castle’s loyal inmates knew of it?

The window creaked. She risked a careful look up. The rope slithered down and she grabbed at it. Her foot slipped and her blood ran cold. But she was safe, a knot digging into her palm.

She climbed as quickly as she could. It would have been easier with her skirts tucked up but she dared not stoop on that narrow ledge. When she finally reached the sill, she hauled herself inside, her hands and arms burning. The upper room was empty. Good. Failla didn’t have to explain herself to the new girl.

The chest beneath the window held darned sheets salvaged from the laundry’s rag pile to save lovers’ knees and buttocks from the floorboards. Failla gathered up an armful. Her dress was plain enough for a maid’s and dangling linen hid her lack of an apron.

She slipped through the door and down the stairs. As she’d wagered, there was no one around. Everyone was occupied with the uproar at the gates.

Easing the door to the castle’s outer ward open, Failla saw sentries up on the battlements exchanging shouts and gestures with men-at-arms inside the castle. More distant, she heard shouting outside the main gate. Reher’s booming voice was unmistakable.

She scurried past the great hall, at the heart of the range of buildings dividing these outer precincts from the castle’s inner ward. No one shouted incredulous recognition. Before anyone wondered why a maid carrying sheets went straight past the laundry, she threw the musty linen down some cellar steps and hurried on.

Between the main gate and the stable yard, the pale stone of the riding school shone in the strengthening daylight. Whatever folk had guessed, when Duke Garnot ordered the old bastion demolished, no one had expected a new hall built solely for exercising horses. Why not, when Carluse’s famed stables won him so much gold and admiration? The horsemasters answered to no one but the duke. Crucially, Horsemaster Corrad had scant respect for the duchess.

But the arched gateway into the stable yard was choked with grooms, all nudging elbows and wide-eyed conjecture. She recognised Parlin, the lad who’d been burdened with telling the duke she’d been kidnapped that spring. She couldn’t possibly get past him unnoticed. Shading her eyes as if the rising sun dazzled her, she thought furiously.

Beneath the riding school’s costly windows a narrow door enabled the duke to take his guests inside to watch his horses display their paces. It was seldom locked and she could reach the yard through the riding school. She began walking.

Someone cried out. Failla heard outrage and accusation. Whether or not it was flung at her, she broke into a run. She wrenched the door open, dashing inside to slam it behind her.

“Who—?” Horsemaster Corrad’s famed ill-temper foundered on astonishment. “Failla?”

She pressed her back against the door, sick with apprehension but determined to make him listen.

“Master Corrad, who can you trust among the garrison sergeants? You have to persuade them to open the town gates.”

There wasn’t a man in the castle who didn’t trust Corrad. They might not like him but everyone knew he was honest.

He gaped at her. The handful of mounted grooms were just as dumbfounded. Even the horses pricked curious ears.

“If Carluse doesn’t surrender, that army will attack at noon. They’ve been told to give quarter but the guards will fight, you know that. Who knows what will happen then? But if the gates can be opened, no one need die!” She took a step forward, beseeching. “They’re not here to rob us or seize the High King’s crown. They want to throw down the dukes to bring us all peace.”